Advanced beam-forming technology with cross-polarization cancellation schemes

ABSTRACT

An advanced digital beam forming technique is achieved that is capable of simultaneously forming multiple beams and attenuating the cross-pol component at multiple locations. The proposed invention, comprising a series of signal inputs, optimization loops and weighting processes, successfully eliminates the side effect of an increase of the cross-pol in the process of beam-forming, thus reducing potential interference. This technique utilizes the orthogonally polarized signal component which is already available and can minimize both the horizontally polarized and vertically polarized cross-pol at the same time. The complexity of computation can be reduced by using only part of the orthogonal polarized components in the optimization.

RELATED APPLICATION DATA

This application claims the benefit, pursuant to 35 U.S.C. §119(e), of U.S. provisional application Ser. No. 61/273,502, filed Aug. 1, 2009.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to the field of radio frequency communications and radio frequency technologies, more specifically the cancellation of the cross-polarized components of radio frequency transmissions. In particular, the invention relates to methods of forming adaptive cancellation schemes to decrease cross-polarized components using the co-polarized components from the orthogonal ports of an antenna array.

2. Description of Related Art

In radio frequency (RF) communications, radio wave polarization is the direction in which radio waves vibrate when propagating. There are two basic types of radio frequency polarization: linear polarization and circular polarization. Linearly polarized signals can vibrate in only one direction, either horizontally or vertically. On the other hand, circularly polarized signals propagate in a circular fashion with either left handed or right-handed rotation, forming a helical shape.

In most cases, an antenna feed can be regarded as two ports with orthogonal polarizations; for example, horizontal polarization (HP) and vertical polarization (VP). Each of the ports receives signal components that have the same polarization called co-pol. However, due to the imperfections of the polarizations of the receiver, each of the ports receives a small portion of orthogonal signal component called cross-pol which introduces interference to the signal. Thus, the received signal of HP and VP can be further broken down into four different parts, namely HP co-pol, HP cross-pol, VP co-pol and VP cross pol.

Since the cross-pol component is relatively small compared with the co-pol component, their influences are often ignored. For example, in the application of smart antenna arrays, digital beam forming techniques (DBF) may be used to increase antenna gain. These methods involve applying proper weightings to each element component in order to maximize co-pol in-phase alignments, resulting in increased signal strength in desired directions.

Although the cross-pol is small, it introduces interference and may limit system performance. In many applications, the cross-component should be attenuated below certain levels so that the antenna may function properly, either to fulfill performance parameters or to reduce interference to a usable level. One possible solution to this issue is using DBF, but considering both the co-pol and cross-pol component as optimization criteria. However, due to the limitation of degrees of freedom, the resulting additional constraint points may compromise average performance. Any improvement in cross-pol mitigation performance directly results in a degradation of co-pol performance. As a result, system performance cannot be improved by just adding extra constraint conditions; instead, additional auxiliary information will be necessary.

Our proposed invention takes advantage of the relationship between the four components of received signals, HP co-pol, HP cross-pol, VP co-pol and VP cross-pol, to minimize the cross-pol in each polarization. Since the degrees of freedom of the system have been greatly increased, the cross-pol component can be reduced significantly without the scarification of the co-pol performance, thus improving the performance of the whole system.

The following references are presented for further background information:

U.S. Pat. No. Issue date Authors 4,575,862 1986-03-11 Masato Tahara et al. 5,710,799 1998-01-20 Kenzo Kobayashi 4,914,676 1990-04-03 Takanori Iwamatsu et al. 7,068,990 2006-06-27 Gerhard Herbig 5,023,620 1991-07-11 Toru Matsuura 5,068,667 1991-11-26 Shoichi Mizoguchi

SUMMARY OF INVENTION

The present invention pertains to an advanced digital beam forming technique that takes the advantage of the relationship between different polarization components (co-pol and cross-pol) to further improve the system performance by increasing the co-pol components while simultaneously suppressing the cross-pol components. More specifically, the advanced digital beam forming system comprises an antenna array and a receiver system, with the receiver system comprising at least one optimization loop, and at least one electronic weighting unit.

This invention takes received signals from the antenna array and sends them through the receiver system. The electronic weighting units will attach an electronic “weight” to each signal which gives the signal a numerical value based on its amplitude and phase. This is cross-referenced with a set of desired parameters. If the weightings do not match the pre-specified parameters, the weighted signals enter an optimization loop where the weightings, and consequently, phase and amplitude weightings, are updated. The signals are then cross-referenced desired parameters again, and this process continues until desired values are reached.

Signals received by each antenna element will then be transmitted to a digital beam forming processor which adaptively generates and applies appropriate beam wave vectors (BWV) to the signals received from each element of the array to create one or more coherent beams from received signals. Due to degree of freedom limitations, an improvement in the performance of cross-pol suppression will result in a compromise in the performance of co-pol component. Therefore, traditional beam forming techniques only focus on the co-pol's optimization because they have more weighting in the performance of the system.

Our proposed method provides an easy way to dramatically weaken the cross-pol component without sacrificing the co-pol component by using auxiliary information to increase the degrees of freedom of the system. For example, compared with HP cross-pol, VP co-pol is much larger and has the same polarization. Therefore, the HP cross-pol can be cancelled by VP co-pol if a small but properly designed weight is applied. On the other hand, the VP cross-pol component will be further diminished by the same weight, thus won't affect the HP co-pol component. By simply utilizing available information, the degrees of freedom are doubled and the system performance can be improved significantly. However, there are several drawbacks to this method of increasing resolution. More computational power is required as there is additional data to be processed within the optimization loop, adding cost and complexity. However, we can use the VP co-pol from part of the antenna elements to achieve the HP cross-pol cancellation which can help reduces the complexity of the computation.

An alternative embodiment of the system in accordance with the present invention comprises multiple antenna elements configured as an antenna array. Signals received or transmitted by each antenna element can be divided into two parts and output or input through two different ports according to their polarization mode. Each part of the signal includes two orthogonal components, co-pol and cross pol. The former part is the signal component that has the same polarization while the latter one is caused by the imperfection of the receiver and has the orthogonal polarization.

For instance, signals can be separated into two orthogonal parts, HP and VP. HP is composed of two orthogonal parts, HP co-pol and HP cross-pol. The former one is horizontally polarized and holds most of the energy of HP. The latter component is vertically polarized and is very small compared with HP co-pol. Similarly, VP co-pol is vertical polarized and relatively big while VP cross pol is horizontally polarized and relatively small.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become better understood from the following detailed descriptions of the preferred embodiment of the invention in conjunction with reference to the following appended claims and accompanying drawings where:

FIG. 1 shows the configuration of the antenna array which is composed of 32 conical feeds.

FIG. 2 shows the contour of summation of the HP co-pol component of the antenna array composed of 32 conical feeds.

FIG. 3 shows the contour of the summation of HP cross-pol component of the antenna array composed of 32 conical feeds.

FIG. 4 illustrates the traditional digital beam forming technique which only optimize the HP co-pol component.

FIG. 5 shows the contour of the HP co-pol component after optimization with traditional beam-forming techniques.

FIG. 6 shows the contour of the HP cross-pol component after optimization with traditional beam-forming techniques.

FIG. 7 illustrates the beam-forming technique that optimizes both HP co-pol and HP cross-pol component without using auxiliary information.

FIG. 8 shows the contours of the HP co-pol components utilizing beam forming techniques for optimization of both HP co-pol and HP cross-pol without auxiliary information.

FIG. 9 shows the contours of the HP co-pol components utilizing beam forming techniques for optimization of both HP co-pol and HP cross-pol without auxiliary information.

FIG. 10 illustrates the proposed beam-forming technique that also utilizes the VP component to minimize the HP co-pol components.

FIG. 11 shows the contours of the HP co-pol component using the proposed beam forming technique, which also uses the VP component for minimization of HP cross-pol.

FIG. 12 shows the contours of the HP co-pol component using the proposed beam forming technique, which also uses the VP component for minimization of HP cross-pol.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

The present invention provides an advanced beam forming technique that not only forms beams using co-pol components, but also minimizes interference by attenuating the cross-pol components. In this section, detailed description will be included by using figures and examples, etc.

FIG. 1 shows the configuration of the antenna array used in the present embodiment. The antenna array is composed of conical feeds 101, of which each feed can be regarded as two orthogonally polarized feeds that output HP and VP components separately. Each polarized feed is supposed to receive and transmit signals with the same polarization called co-pol. However, due to the imperfections of the feeds, each feed receives and transmits a small portion of signal component with orthogonal polarization, called cross-pol.

FIG. 2 shows the contour plot of the antenna array's HP co-pol component which is calculated by summarizing all the HP co-pol of the conical feeds. 201 and 202 which range from −45 to 45 degree are the V- and X-axis of the UV plane, respectively. Maximum gain 203 of the antenna array is 19.284 dB.

FIG. 3 shows the contour plot of the antenna array's HP cross-pol component. The maximum gain is −25.5 dB which is about 45 dB smaller than the maximum gain 203 of the co-pol component. Additionally, average gains of the HP cross-pol components are also small compared to HP co-pol.

FIG. 4 shows the optimization scheme of traditional beam forming technique which only optimizes the HP co-pol component. HP co-pol components 401 from conical feeds and HP cross-pol 402 from feeds are all applied with weight vectors by the weighting unit 403. Weighting unit 403 is used to adjust the amplitudes and phases of the outputs of each antenna element to generate an updated HP co-pol output 406 and HP cross-pol output 407. New HP co-pol component 406 is then transmitted to optimization module 404 as feedback, wherein a new weight vector will be calculated based on certain adaptive algorithms. Optimization loop 405 will adaptively increase HP co-pol components at certain desired positions until predetermined parameters are met.

FIG. 5 shows the result of forming a beam at (30, −30) degree on the UV plane. The co-pol energy increased significantly from less than 0 dB 204 to about 16.5 dB 503 at the desired point. However, the cross-pol component at (30, −30) degree also increased from about −40 dB 301 to around 0 dB 601. Although the co-pol performance has dramatically increased, since the optimization process only focus on the co-pol component, the cross-pol power has also increased significantly, leading to cross-pol created interference.

An attempt to solve this problem involved a method utilizing two optimization loops 705, 706, with the intention of maximizing co-pol component output 707 while minimizing the cross-pol component output 708. The results showed that the cross-pol did keep at around −30 dB 901; however, the co-pol output also remained below 0 dB 801.

With the double optimization loop technique inadequately fulfilling our requirements, an alternative method is suggested, utilizing an advanced beam-forming technique that takes advantage of orthogonally polarized signal components to simultaneously increase co-pol energy and minimize the cross-pol energy at specified locations. As shown in FIG. 10, inputs from VP co-pol 1003 and VP cross-pol components 1004 are used as well as the inputs of HP co-pol 1001 and HP cross-pol components 1002. In this case, the size of the weight vectors 1005 increases from 32 to 64. The first 32 weight are applied on the HP component while the latter 32 are for the VP. The 33^(rd) to the 64^(th) weight are relatively small compared with the former 32 weights. These weights are used to decrease the energy of VP co-pol to cross-pol levels, while making the VP co-pol out of phase with HP cross-pol, thus cancelling the HP cross-pol. The VP cross-pol is further decreased with VP co-pol, so its influence on HP co-pol can be negated. Therefore, the degree of freedom of the system is doubled and performance is greatly improved.

As shown in FIG. 11 and FIG. 12, the co-pol energy at (30,−30) degree is above 16 dB while the cross-pol remains below the −30 dB level. Compared with traditional beam-forming techniques, the co-pol performance remains the same and but cross-pol is much lower. Similarly, the VP cross-pol component can be eliminated by using the HP co-pol component.

In conclusion, our present invention provides an advanced beam-forming technique that forms beam at specified locations and minimizes the cross-pol components by using orthogonal polarized signal information. The cross-pol power dropped dramatically in the simulation. All of the auxiliary information used is available and we can use part of the orthogonal co-pol component to reduce the amount of computation. 

1. An advanced beam-forming technique for maximizing polarization co-pol while minimizing polarization cross-pol components for radio frequency transmit terminals, comprising, an antenna array, a signal conditioning portion, a memory element portion adapted to store calibration data comprising beam weight vectors associated with plurality of said antenna elements, a digital beam forming processor (DBF), adapted to process the frequency down-converted signals from the plurality of antenna elements, an array processor, wherein, the radio frequency signals are processed by the DBF and array processors so that cross-pol interference is minimized while maximizing co-pol power output before transmission.
 2. The antenna array of claim 1, wherein the array is comprised of a plurality of antenna elements, each of which has at least two ports transmitting orthogonally polarized signal components, outputting both vertically and horizontally polarized components of a transmitted signal.
 3. The signal conditioning portion of claim 1, wherein a plurality of low noise amplifiers and a plurality of frequency up-converters are connected to the inputs of the antenna array to up-convert intermediate and baseband frequency signals to signals ready for long-distance transmission.
 4. The digital beam forming processor of claim 1, wherein said processor is further adapted to apply the beam weighting vectors to the intermediate and baseband signals before being input to said signal conditioning unit.
 5. The array processor of claim 1, wherein said array processor is adapted to control the DBF processor, which processes the baseband signals from the plurality of antenna elements, wherein the array processor is further adapted to assign one or some of multiple array elements to increase co-pol component and decrease cross-pol component at desired direction.
 6. The transmit terminal of claim 1, wherein the co-pol and cross-pol of the signal component with both the same and orthogonal polarizations are processed by said DBF processor to increase the co-pol while simultaneously decreasing the cross-pol signal component of one or both polarizations at one or multiple desired directions.
 7. The transmit terminal of claim 1, wherein only part of the co-pol and cross pol of the signal component with both the same and orthogonal polarization are processed by the said DBF processor to increase the co-pol and minimize the cross-pol of signal component of one polarization or both polarizations at one or multiple desired directions.
 8. The transmit terminal of claim 1, wherein only the co-pol and cross pol of the signal components of the same polarization are processed by said DBF processor to increase the co-pol while simultaneously decreasing the cross-pol of signal component of the same polarization at one or multiple desired directions.
 9. The transmit terminal of claim 1, wherein the co-pol and cross pol of the signal component of one or both polarization is optimized by said DBF processor, and the output together with co-pol and cross-pol of signal component with orthogonal polarization are processed by DBF, optimized again to increase the co-pol and minimize the cross-pol of signal component with one or both polarization at one or multiple desired directions.
 10. The transmitter of claim 1, wherein the co-pol and cross pol of the signal component of one or both polarization are optimized by DBF processor, and the output together with part of the co-pol and cross-pol of the signal component with orthogonal polarization are optimized by DBF processor again to increase the co-pol and minimize the cross-pol of signal component of one or both polarization at one or multiple desired directions.
 11. An advanced beam-forming technique for maximizing polarization co-pol while minimizing polarization cross-pol components for radio frequency receive terminals, comprising, an antenna array, a signal conditioning portion, a memory element portion adapted to store calibration data comprising beam weight vectors associated with plurality of said antenna elements, a digital beam forming processor (DBF), adapted to process the frequency down-converted signals from the plurality of antenna elements, an array processor, wherein, the radio frequency signals are processed by the DBF and array processors so that cross-pol interference is minimized while maximizing co-pol power output before transmission.
 2. The antenna array of claim 1, wherein the array is comprised of a plurality of antenna elements, each of which has at least two ports transmitting orthogonally polarized signal components, outputting both vertically and horizontally polarized components of a received signal.
 3. The signal conditioning portion of claim 1, wherein a plurality of low noise amplifiers and a plurality of frequency down-converters are connected to the outputs of the antenna array to down-convert received analog signals to intermediate and baseband frequency signals ready for processing after being received.
 4. The digital beam forming processor of claim 1, wherein connected to outputs of said conditioning portion, wherein said processor is further adapted to apply the beam weighting vectors to the intermediate and baseband signals before being input to the optimization loop.
 5. The array processor of claim 1, wherein said array processor is adapted to control the DBF processor, which processes the baseband signals from the plurality of antenna elements, wherein the array processor is further adapted to assign one or some of multiple array elements to increase co-pol component and decrease cross-pol component at desired direction.
 6. The receive terminal of claim 1, wherein the co-pol and cross-pol of the signal component with both the same and orthogonal polarizations are processed by said DBF processor to increase the co-pol while simultaneously decreasing the cross-pol signal component of one or both polarizations at one or multiple desired directions.
 7. The receive terminal of claim 1, wherein only part of the co-pol and cross pol of the signal component with both the same and orthogonal polarization are processed by the said DBF processor to increase the co-pol and minimize the cross-pol of signal component of one polarization or both polarizations at one or multiple desired directions.
 8. The receive terminal of claim 1, wherein only the co-pol and cross pol of the signal components of the same polarization are processed by said DBF processor to increase the co-pol while simultaneously decreasing the cross-pol of signal component of the same polarization at one or multiple desired directions.
 9. The receive terminal of claim 1, wherein the co-pol and cross pol of the signal component of one or both polarization is optimized by said DBF processor, and the output together with co-pol and cross-pol of signal component with orthogonal polarization are processed by DBF, optimized again to increase the co-pol and minimize the cross-pol of signal component with one or both polarization at one or multiple desired directions.
 10. The receive of claim 1, wherein the co-pol and cross pol of the signal component of one or both polarization are optimized by DBF processor, and the output together with part of the co-pol and cross-pol of the signal component with orthogonal polarization are optimized by DBF processor again to increase the co-pol and minimize the cross-pol of signal component of one or both polarization at one or multiple desired directions. 